


nights like these

by kuillsins (EykielAfterDark)



Category: MapleStory
Genre: M/M, Punishment, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:16:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EykielAfterDark/pseuds/kuillsins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘Sixty-four innocent lives, lost because your words aren’t enough.’ </p><p>Eun's words hurt him so deeply he would rather have the pain than to listen to all this and feel the pain of his chest, clenching in on itself. ‘Punish me,’ Freud keens.</p><p>And Eun does. He doesn't hold back. Not on nights like these.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nights like these

Freud has failed again.

Another round of pointless negotiations, pointless threatening. Logic can’t get to them. How hard he tried, with all the resources he’d been given. The Black Wings are irrational, no amount of diplomacy can get through to them, but what can he do? What can the alliance do? No final outcome garnered means that the wretched plan of theirs will go through.

And then death will be on his hands.

There are costs in war, but none as avoidable as these deaths, pointless deaths for a pointless cause.

All because his words cannot sway the hands that will strike come tomorrow night.

He nods at the advisors who have planned with him until this late, bids them good rest, assures them that there is still hope, assures them that somehow he will make it better. He knows they are just expecting this, and regards their satisfied smiles that at least no blood will be on their hands, as file out the conference hall, leaving him alone, coated in the light of an unfeeling moon, a platter with the same sheen as bleached bones.

‘Freud.’

The low baritone note cuts into his thoughts. He looks up to see a dark figure in the doorway, cascading locks of threaded onyx catching the moonlight. No twilight looks more beautiful than the one compressed into the man’s eyes.

‘Eun,’ Freud says, his voice is weak and broken, a sound of surrender. He doesn’t need to pretend. Eun is the only one who sees this part of him. Patient, understanding, silent Eun, with a past perhaps equally as bloody as the acts he cannot prevent, is the only one who empathises.

‘How many?’ Eun asks quietly.

‘They’re going to hit a town a distance away from Henesys,’ he replies, managing to stop his voice hitching at the thought of all the innocents who are going to be killed, ‘And if we intervene, they will attack the main town instead —’

‘How many will die?’

Eun’s gaze is unflinching.

Freud cannot hold it any longer. ‘Forty, if they’re lucky.’

‘How many people live there?’

Freud doesn’t want to answer, but he needs Eun to know, he needs what is coming for him.

‘By my last count, sixty-four. That was a year ago.’

‘Sixty-four.’ Eun nods, and then locks the door behind them.

The mercenary approaches him, and then passes by without a word. Freud watches him walk over to the main table where his notes and papers are still strewn, pull out the chair he had sat at, and take his seat.

Eun’s gaze is purposeful. ‘You know what to do, Freud.’

He swallows the growing lump in his throat, and strips. He lays his red robes, heavy with his responsibilities across the chair closest to him, shrugs out of his shirt while trying not to look at the dragon master’s insignia he has to bear, steps out of his pants.

Then he lowers himself to the ground, and crawls over, down the stairs, feeling the coldness of the marble bite into his palms and knees, shivering in the night chill and in fearful but expectant anticipation of what is to come.

The dragon master’s headband is so heavy, he wishes he could take it off.

But Eun said he still needed something to remind him of his place, especially on nights like these.

He comes to a rest between Eun’s legs, keeping his forlorn eyes on the ground. Eun offers him his hand and he nuzzles into it, closing his eyes and breathing in his faint scent before Eun gently cups his cheek and tilts his head up.

He gives himself in to Eun’s deep, twilight gaze.

‘Sixty-four innocent lives, lost because your words aren’t enough.’

His throat clenches.

‘It’s not the first time something like this has happened. Negotiations have failed before, though this time it’s the highest number yet. And in whose hands does this fault lie?’

‘Mine,’ he whispers into the dead silence that listens.

The word is so, so bitter.

‘You will never be able to repent, Freud, or feel their pain in their entirety.’

Eun runs his hand over the dragon master’s headband.

‘All you have are numbers. A statistic. And you’re at the head of it all.’

‘Punish me,’ he keens, the words hurt him so deeply he would rather have the pain than to listen to all this and feel the pain of his chest, clenching in on itself —

Eun pulls away and he hurriedly gets to his feet, eager and desperate. He waits until Eun has opened his legs before he bends over, lowering himself so his midriff rests across the mercenary’s spread thighs.

He waits in the silence, grasping the silk of Eun’s trousers so fiercely that his knuckles are white, heart pounding and throat dry.

He can never prepare enough for the first blow of Eun’s hand crashing down across the cheeks of his rear.

Eun doesn’t hold back, not on nights like these.

Freud arches back into the pain with a muffled gasp of surprise.

He grits his teeth as he raises his arm, shifts his weight slightly, and brings it down ruthlessly across the thin fabric of Freud’s underwear. Again Freud lets out another grunt, this time he manages to bite back the sound, he can hear from the strain that Freud is feeling the sting.

Freud is his friend. Freud is the bravest man he has ever come across. Freud is one of the few to treat him as an equal, though he will never amount to half of the man’s goodness and purity. Yet, he is a mercenary for Freud, on nights like these, when conferences go awry and this man, this man who is kind beyond all possibility, has to work the guillotine alone.

_Two. Three._

He watches the mage fight the urge to squirm. Normally he will be more than happy to admire the muscles under his ivory skin rippling as they lay in bed together, or as Freud writhed in the throes of deepest passion and let beautiful notes of arousal drop from his soft lips like rain. But tonight, he makes the man arch his back from the fire that he is spreading across the left cheek, aiming for the sit-spots because Freud had asked him to.

_Four. Five. Six._

He switches patterns, brings the palm of his hand fiercely down on the other cheek, catching Freud across the hemline of his briefs at his upper thighs. Freud just hangs there, fingers clawing helplessly against his leg as he strikes again and again, seeing the first tinges of red appear in faint teasing imprints of a hand-shaped mark. The other cheek of his rear is flared deep crimson, the blood rushing under the skin, it must feel like fire against the cold night air.

_Seven. Eight._

He places his other hand on the small of the man’s back to hold him still as he shifts his aim again, this time bringing his hand fiercely across both cheeks at once, making sure to catch the red patch on Freud’s other cheek under his fingers. Eun must give Freud pain, tonight, for the burden of lives lost is Freud's to bear, Eun's to hurt the ones he holds closest — as it always is, on nights like these.

_Nine. Ten —_

Freud is twisting his hips slightly, he doesn’t cry out yet, the mage is all tensed and rigid muscles, he sees the tightness in his jaw from his teeth, gritted to bite back the pain. But Eun will make Freud cry tonight, as he does, on nights like these.

Freud has lost count of how many blows it has been, his right cheek _hurts_ , he can barely stop squirming as Eun attacks both cheeks at once. The repeated impact of Eun’s hand, rough and calloused, across his ass is enough to make his breaths come short, he’s fighting every instinct that tells him to run, that all it takes is for him to roll sideways and tumble to the ground, and everything will stop.

But he doesn’t, he welcomes the pain as Eun shifts patterns again, opening up another burn on his left cheek and on the sit-spot he had been paying such close attention to just now. He’s gasping openly for breath, the pain increasing with every strike, he doesn’t lean back into the blows any more, he’s just trying not to squirm out of his lap.

When he is sure that Eun has covered every inch of his ass and there is nowhere new that the man can lay waste to, Eun increases the force behind his hand.

The pain makes stars appear in his vision, and Freud screams.

His voice is strained from all the pain he had been trying to bite back, and it cracks the silence in the most obscene way, he hates the sound of the first scream he always lets out. But Eun doesn’t give him time to reflect as he breaks his methodical pattern and starts bringing his hand down on one cheek, and then the other, near the thigh and then closer to the crack of his ass, and then just below his tailbone, he can’t predict where the next blow is coming and he just gives himself in to the pain, gasping haggardly against Eun’s leg.

One strike for every life he can’t save, for every mistake he shouldn’t have made but did. He closes his eyes, the sound of his shaky yelps mingling with the sharp slap of skin against skin, the pain so fierce that he can’t take it any longer and he tries to squirm out of Eun’s lap. Surely, he thinks blearily, as he rests his weight on his feet and makes desperately to get up, surely all sixty-four blows have been delivered.

Eun growls, ‘No.’

The mercenary’s other hand presses on his upper back, forcing him back down and then it lands squarely across his ass, Eun puts so much weight into this strike that he’s jolted forward with a yell and has to prop himself up with one hand on the ground to stop from falling. In this awkward position Eun only has to snake his free arm around his waist to immobilize him completely, and it takes but a few seconds before Freud is clutching onto Eun’s leg for something, anything as blow by blow eats away at his control and sanity.

It’s fiercer than any other time he has given himself over to his punishment, and as Eun switches the pattern of his blows again to pay attention to the sit-spots yet again, Freud realises he can take no more.

‘E-Eun, Eun stop, please —’

Tears are coursing down his cheeks, forced from his eyelids from every new blow, he’s trying to fight Eun’s grip around his midriff but he can’t move, and still Eun’s hand is slamming mercilessly against his tortured ass.

‘It hurts, Eun I can’t —’

‘Take it.’

Freud howls, he can’t help it, not when even the slightest squeeze of his ass feels like his muscles are being torn apart.

‘I can’t —’

‘Take it!’ Eun raises his voice. He lets a sliver of his frustration escape into his action, drives home his point with another harsh blow that has Freud start to sob incoherently, making piteous noises into his trouser leg. The mage’s usually-steady hands are trembling and his chest is heaving from the breaths he’s trying to fight into his lungs.

Only then does Eun stay his hand and gently help Freud into his lap, careful not to touch any part of Freud’s abused behind. He has to hide a wince, the angry welts and deep bruises that have formed look cruel and they shouldn’t belong on the scholar’s flawless skin.

He runs fingers through Freud’s sweaty hair, plants a long kiss on his forehead, murmuring gentle words of encouragement and praise that mean nothing as he kisses away the tears on Freud’s cheek.

Slowly, Freud’s frantic sobbing ceases, his breathing slows. Freud clutches at Eun’s khaki overcoat, turning so he can nuzzle into the fabric.

His mind is whited out, the voices are finally quiet, and while the deaths can never be paid for this way, he finds he has the strength to carry on one day more.

Eun is lifting him up with an arm under his knees and one cradling his ribcage as if he weighs nothing. Beside the door, he clings to Eun’s neck and nuzzles there as Eun drapes his heavy robe of responsibilities back over him to conceal his nakedness, collects his other clothes before carrying him in his arms again. They keep to the shadows, the scent of Eun’s hair comforting and he closes his eyes, listening to the mercenary’s gentle breaths as they make for his room.

Eun helps him onto his bed and he sinks tiredly into the sheets, on his stomach, clutching a pillow under his chin.

‘Thank you,’ he murmurs as Eun climbs into bed.

Eun nods quietly, shifting to rub calming circles into his shoulders. He won’t be able to sleep with the sheets over him, so it’s going to be a cold night, but really, the cold doesn’t really matter much right now.

And as he begins to feel the weariness from the day creep into his mind, and as his eyelids begins to droop, a question slips into his mind — did he manage to sit through all sixty-four blows?

‘How many times?’ his question isn’t even properly phrased, he can never seem to get it out on nights like these, but he’s sure Eun understands. Eun always does.

Eun lies down and shuffles closer to him, clasping one of his hands with his own that is reddened from the blows.

‘Enough to pay for tonight’s debt,’ Eun says, as he does on nights like these, ‘Just barely enough.’

**Author's Note:**

> THREE CHEERS FOR STARTING THIS FIC AT 1:30 IN THE MORNING  
> ;___;
> 
> Thanks to those who stayed up to watch me write it! And thanks too to Shi for her contribution of one of the lines that I find so beautiful :> "... the burden of lives lost is Freud's to bear, Eun's to hurt the ones he holds closest".
> 
> Freunwol is just such a sad pairing though. Ngh


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